The invention is directed to an apparatus for flexible recognition of subject structures comprising an opto-electronic image converter for line-by-line image scanning, whereby the respectively momentary brightness value of selected parts of the image scanning is logically processed with a defined, previously derived logic result deposited in a memory and the reduced image data are interpreted in an image processor for locating the sought structures.
The automation of visual measuring and testing processes in industrial production requires sensor systems having high flexibility and short processing times. The image processing must keep pace with the speed of modern production lines given different recognition jobs. Clock times of a few 1/10 seconds are thereby provided.
Image processing systems that enable the processing of a stored video image in the gray-key image (8 bits) with computer programs are currently available as commercially available systems.
The immense data sets (about 1OM byte/sec) arising in the image interpretation, however, cannot be conveniently processed and interpreted by any computer system on-line, even with the employment of special hardware processors, such as bit slice systems or array processors. As a consequence of the high capital costs and of the involved program development, the employment of such systems in industrial fabrication, moreover, is only seldom economical.
It is therefore necessary to implement a data reduction of the on-line image information, based on job-specific subject features on the basis of a designational hardware processing.
An electronically scanned color image having a topical resolution of 512.times.512 points and 3.times.8 bits for the R, G and B channels supplies a data stream of 157 million bps for a scanning rate of 25 frames per sec. (Markt Und Technik, No. 6, 7 February 1986, pgs. 82-104).
European Patent Application 196,514 discloses an apparatus for the detection of edges that recognizes the orthogonal edge structures of an image by summation of the digitized video signals of a CCD image converter in a row and column integrator.